Ludhiana citizens experts govt officials discuss implementation of Clean Air Action Plan for city
The discussion was organised by EcoSikh in collaboration with Clean Air Punjab a citizen initiative. The panel included Swati Tiwana joint commissioner Ludhiana Municipal Corporation; Gulshan Rai chief environmental engineer Punjab Pollution Control Board PPCB More than a hundred concerned citizens from Ludhiana which had received a special grant of Rs 26 crore last year to improve air quality in the state’s industrial heartland attended the session to understand how authorities were implementing and executing the action plan.Tiwana said Ludhiana was a non attainment city a city is declared non attainment if over a five year period it consistently does not meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards and hence has been getting grants under the 15th Finance Commission from the Centre specifically to control sources of pollution, and neutralise if not minimise them.To counter all the damages being caused due to air pollution efforts must be put into making complete changes on the ground as well as planning in a way that at least in the future we are able to bring down air pollution levels she emphasised.anguly further stated that seasonal crop residue burning also deteriorates the citys air quality. Therefore to address pollution in the city it would be imperative to ramp up air quality monitoring and generate more evidence on local and regional sources of pollution impacting the city she added.Kahan Singh Pannu said strict action needs to be taken against pollution from smoke spewing factories, especially thermal paper cement and chemical plants besides brick kilns as these industry owners often deliberately turn off pollution control devices to save cost, even though effectively installed.Apart from other actions under the clean air action plan, we must also conserve our Mattewara forest and all other smaller forests and tree cover in Ludhiana as we and our future generations will need oxygen to breathe and this green cover will help us in improving the air quality.
